Why play defense when you can just outscore people?
That appears to be the new normal for San Diego State’s basketball team, so steeped in defensive history and suddenly better at scoring points than preventing them.
Or so Lamar, a defensive-oriented program, found out Wednesday night at Viejas Arena in an 89-71 Aztecs win that featured 51 first-half points from variety of methods – dunks, layups, bank shots, mid-range jumpers, 3s, free throws, lots of free throws.
The Aztecs had a balanced attack, with six players scoring eight or more points, led by 19 from Miles Byrd to go with five rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocks. BJ Davis had 16 points on 5 of 8 shooting. Magoon Gwath had 10 points, six rebounds and two blocks. Reese Dixon-Waters had nine points in a season-low 22 minutes. Sean Newman Jr. and Pharaoh Compton had eight each.
That a team ranking near the bottom of Division I in made 3s per game dropped a season-high 14 on the Aztecs – 10 in the first half alone – didn’t matter when you just went to other end and made one yourself.
It was the latest step forward for an Aztecs group that plummeted to 126 in the NET metric and fell from 29 to 57 in the (probably more accurate) Kenpom metric. The defense still isn’t fixed, but the offensive woes of past seasons increasingly seem like a distant memory.
SDSU is now 5-3 entering the Mountain West opener here next Wednesday against struggling Air Force, followed three days later by the opposite end of the college basketball spectrum: No. 1 Arizona in Phoenix.
The Cardinals are coached by Alvin Brooks, who spent seven seasons on Kelvin Sampson’s staff at Houston and brought many of the same concepts with him to Beaumont, Texas. Toughness. Physicality. Defense. More defense.
They entered the night ranked 13th nationally in scoring defense, allowing just 62.6 points per game. On offense, they were averaging only 6.5 3-pointers per game while shooting 32.1% behind the arc, which ranks 295th and 242nd, respectively.
So what happens?
SDSU drops 51 on them in the first half, and Lamar can’t miss from deep.
The Cardinals had already surpassed their per-game average on 3s with nearly nine minutes left in the first half. They went without a 2-point basket for the opening 13 minutes and went to the locker room shooting 45.5% behind the arc (10 of 22) … and 18.2% (2 of 11) inside it.
Instead of ratcheting up the D, as past teams would have, the new-look Aztecs merely raced to the other end and outscored them.
Davis was averaging 12.1 points off the bench and already had 14 by halftime in just 10 minutes, thanks to 4 of 5 shooting and 5 of 5 from the line. Byrd was also in double figures by halftime (12) first-half points, and the Aztecs were rolling.
The second half became a question of whether the Cardinals would continue their torrid perimeter shooting and keep it close, or there’d be a regression to the mean and the Aztecs would extend the lead.
The answer was the latter, when the Cardinals (5-4) missed their first six shots of the second half and Brooks was slamming down his stool in frustration during a timeout.
Notable
The student section wasn’t full for the first time this season, although that might have something to do with the start of final exams … Miles Heide (hip) and Taj DeGourville (wrist) both played despite missing practices with injuries. Heide had special padding and started. DeGourville came off the bench but was not wearing the thick brace that he has in practice … DeGourville went to the locker room momentarily in the second half after getting blood on his No. 24 jersey, returning in No. 35 … Lamar challenged an out-of-bounds call with 3:46 left that was upheld after video review.